The present invention relates to optical connectors used in coupling optical elements, such as optical probes, to an electronic circuit.
In a typical prior art test instrument, an optical connector is mounted to a wall of the test instrument. Such a connector includes a body which supports a ceramic ferrule with an axial bore. An optical fiber is positioned in the bore and terminates flush with the respective ends of the ferrule. One or more relatively long optical fibers are mounted to an end of the ferrule with a first end of each fiber in optical communication with the fiber in the ferrule. The opposite ends of each of the fibers are connected to a circuit board in alignment with respective photo diodes on the board.
This prior art approach suffers from a number of disadvantages. For example, it is difficult to install an individual optical fiber on a circuit board in alignment with a photo diode on the circuit board. Automated robots may be used to interconnect electrically conductive wires to a circuit board. However, because of problems associated with aligning optical fibers with photo diodes, it is impractical, and heretofore virtually impossible, to use robots to mount optical fibers in alignment with photo diodes. Consequently, manual operations are required to perform this step. This increases the labor costs and time required to complete the optical connector to electronic circuit interface. In addition, optical fibers are relatively inflexible in comparison to electrically conductive wires. Consequently, when optical fibers are flexed and positioned for coupling to a photo diode on a printed circuit board or other circuit, strain exists at the connection point between the fiber and circuit. Furthermore, optical fibers are somewhat easy to break. Therefore, in some cases repeated attempts are required to successfully make an optical fiber to photo diode connection due to breakage of the fibers.
Therefore, a need exists for an optical connector which overcomes these and other drawbacks of the prior art and in particular which improves the coupling of an optical element to an electronic circuit.